Our Park Ranger surveillance has captured strange footprints at various parks & trails in the area. If you find these,...

Posted by Round Rock Parks and Recreation Department on Saturday, June 10, 2017

According to time and location stamps on the photos, the three images were captured at Freeman Park, Old Settlers Park and Brushy Creek Trail between June 8 and June 10. Two of the images look simply like footprints, but a third photo, which also features a person’s foot for scale, shows the muddy footprints are quite large.

It’s not the first time a perhaps-mythical, perhaps-real creature has been spotted in Central Texas. In 2012, a Cedar Park resident spotted a chupacabra — or it could have just been a rather mangy-looking coyote. And in 2015, a Rockdale resident found an animal carcass by a creek on his land and thought it could have been a chupacabra.

Our very own Mike Parker, editor of the Pflugerville Pflag and Round Rock Leader community newspapers, thinks the creature may be the “Hairy Man,” a local legend which dates back to Round Rock’s pioneer days and which has inspired a local 5K and Hairy Man contest.

We’re not saying it’s definitely Bigfoot, because as one Facebook commenter said, if there are cameras at the parks to capture these images, then why aren’t their photos of the Sasquatch himself? But if you’re hiking in any Round Rock parks this summer, you should probably keep an eye out for something large and hairy.